


Elocution

by gooseberry



Series: Porcelain Figures [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Friendship/Love, Gen, Genderswap, Inheritance, Politics, Reunions, fem!Bilbo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 05:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14664342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/gooseberry
Summary: “Mistress Baggins,” Thorin says. Briony had forgotten the sound of his voice, but when he speaks, it is familiar—achingly familiar, the way her mother and father’s voices would be familiar, the way her cousins’ voices are familiar after months apart. She aches with it, for it, and she wonders how she had managed to forget his tone and his cadence, the way he bites off his hard consonants.“Thorin,” she says in reply. “This is quite unexpected.”Then, stupidly, as she’s opening her pretty green door further, motioning for him to come in out of the spring damp, she says, “I dreamt of you last week.”---An alternate universe of an alternate universe, for @ravencromwell who asked for a meme fic "wherein Thorin was alive, and he had to resolve all these things around his feelings for Briony/his child and his role as king; the power vested in him vs. his wishes as a man, which's like so much my fucking jam."That's my jam, too. So there's a bunch of feels, and Thorin and Briony trying to feel things out slowly, tentatively, with little to no resolution. To be honest, I have no idea how far this will go, but hey! At least they're together!





	Elocution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Raven_Cromwell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_Cromwell/gifts).



> For @ravencromwell's prompt: 
> 
>  
> 
> _So for I love you prompts if you're still taking them: I remember you talking about a possible direction for the Crockery verse wherein Thorin was alive, and he had to resolve all these things around his feelings for Briony/his child and his role as king; the power vested in him vs. his wishes as a man, which's like so much my fucking jam. So, if you're inclined to go back to that verse: **29: slowly, dripping off your tongue like honey.** Thorin to either Briony or the child or anyone honestly?_

Thorin rings the bell at Briony’s door in the late spring. It’s a cold day, the air damp from an afternoon rain; Briony had opened the windows along the southern side of Bag-End after the rain had stopped, and the halls of her smial smell of fresh rain and heavy flowers and damp soil. Briony is in the parlor, mending resting in her lap as she listens to the dripping of water from lip of earth that overhangs her parlor window, when the bell rings in the hall.

“Drogo,” she calls, but there’s no immediate answer. Drogo had gone back to his room to play a while ago, before the rain had stopped, and that’s most likely where he is now, all his attention taken up by some toy or other.

When the bell rings once more, Briony sets the mending aside and rises from her chair. She calls Drogo’s name again, shouting it when she reaches the hallway. There’s still no answer, neither the sound of him shouting back, nor the pattering of his feet on the cool stone of the floors. Briony huffs and goes to the front door herself, only a little cross from Drogo’s absence and the bell’s jangling.

She isn’t expecting anyone; Belba had visited earlier in the week, and Amaranth returned to Buckland the week before. Tuckborough and Bucklebury are too far for unannounced visits, particularly during rainy weeks, which makes the appearance of any cousins rather unlikely. Hamfast is her most likely visitor, but he only ever knocks at her kitchen door. 

“Gandalf, perhaps,” she mutters to herself as she reaches the front door. It does seem rather like Gandalf, to arrive unannounced in the middle of a rainy week, like a gleam of sunlight from the sun peaking through clouds between bouts of rain. It seems just dramatic enough for a wizard. 

So she opens her door, anticipating a wizard, or perhaps a visitor come up from Hobbiton with the break in the rain; what she finds instead is Thorin. 

He looks much like he did during their journey: his face is pinched into a glower, though that means little, considering how often he frowns—or frowned—in general; his cloak is wet, and there is mud splashed over its hem, as well as his boots and what Briony can see of his trousers. There are differences, though: the length of his beard, and the vibrant blue of his cloak, and the white in his hair.

“Oh.” She tightens her hand on the handle of her door, then takes a small step forward, so that she’s standing on the line of the threshold. 

“Mistress Baggins,” Thorin says. Briony had forgotten the sound of his voice, but when he speaks, it is familiar—achingly familiar, the way her mother and father’s voices would be familiar, the way her cousins’ voices are familiar after months apart. She aches with it, for it, and she wonders how she had managed to forget his tone and his cadence, the way he bites off his hard consonants. 

“Thorin,” she says in reply. “This is quite unexpected.”

Then, stupidly, as she’s opening her pretty green door further, motioning for him to come in out of the spring damp, she says, “I dreamt of you last week.”

x

She doesn’t dream of him as often as she once did. In the beginning, when she was pregnant and the Lonely Mountain was only months behind her, she would dream of him most every night. She had dreamt of all her dwarves: Bifur and Bofur and Bombur, Oin and Gloin; Dwalin and Balin, Dori and Nori and Ori. Most of all, though, she had dreamt of Fili and Kili and Thorin—always Thorin. Time had passed, though, and years separated her from the Lonely Mountain. Years separated her from Thorin’s Company, and hundreds of miles, and a promise made in the dark halls of Thorin’s mountain, and with all the separation of years and miles and promises, her dreams of her dwarves began to fade.

Distance may make the heart grow fonder, but life makes the heart grow broader. Briony’s life—Briony’s heart—is full of love, and every year there is more for her to love. Her heart is full of treasures: her daydreams and her maps, her mother’s knickknacks and her father’s journals, her beautiful home with its green door and stone floor and carved mantlepieces. She has her aunts and her uncles and her cousins, and most of all she has her son. Her heart is busy with all she has to love, and Thorin—as much as she loved him then and loves him still—is only one distant piece of Briony’s life. 

Now, Briony dreams most often of Bag-End and Drogo. She dreams of Drogo as a baby, and she dreams of Drogo as a toddler, and she dreams of Drogo as a child. She dreams of him walking through Bag-End’s hallways, his hand trailing over the wall; she dreams of him digging for earthworms in the garden; she dreams of him playing with his cousins in Tuckborough. Now, dreams of Thorin are like dreams of her parents: rare, and warm, and bittersweet in the best way, like a good cry in the early morning.

x

They sit together in the parlor. Briony directs Thorin to the best chair; it was Bungo’s when he was alive, and it is Gandalf’s when he visits, and it is Briony’s when she is alone apart from Drogo. The chair is beautifully upholstered, its fat, squashy arms and back covered over with a lovely brocade of green scrollwork on a purple background. It fits Thorin better than any of Briony’s other chairs, but as lovely as it is, Briony still looks at it and thinks that it must be very plain if compared to the chairs of the Lonely Mountain. 

It must be very small and very homey when compared to Thorin’s throne. 

“This is quite unexpected,” she says again as she tucks her mending away in its basket. Thorin is watching her, his eyes following her hands as she sets the mending basket to the side. When Briony straightens, laying her now empty hands in her lap, Thorin lifts his eyes toward her face.

“I abdicated,” Thorin tells her, short and abrupt.

Briony isn’t certain what she should say—she isn’t certain if there is anything she _can_ say. What she offers is a non-committal, _Oh_.

“In favor of Fili,” Thorin continues, as though Briony had asked for an explanation. “He is young, but he is—” Thorin makes a _tsk_ ing sound. 

“I am not,” he says slowly, as though he is feeling out the words, as blind now as they were when the Company had been lost in Mirkwood—stumbling blind, their hands outstretched as they searched for the path and light and each other, “what Erebor needs now. I was king of a lost people, and now that we have found our way home—I was the king of a different time and a different people.”

“I understand,” Briony answers. It is half-lie: she will never understand the heartbreak of losing one’s home, of wandering for most of one’s life made an excile by the jealous whims of a dragon. It is also half-truth: she knows Fili’s gentleness and loyalty, the fierce love and compassion she holds for everyone around him.

Thorin nods, and they both grow quiet. It has begun to rain again, the sound of the rain clear and loud in the quiet of the parlor. Briony looks toward the window, where a few scattered raindrops have splashed the inside sill. She sweeps her feet over the rug, then stands from her chair, shaking her skirts into place.

“The windows,” she says as Thorin looks at her, and after she has shut the windows in the parlor, she moves onto the kitchen and dining room, then her study and bedroom. 

With the lateness of the day and the gloom of the clouds, the light in her smial is growing dim, and so she begins lighting the lamps in the rooms in partial reverse: her bedroom, the atrium, the kitchen. When she peeks into the parlor from the kitchen, Thorin is still sitting Bungo’s beautiful chair; he is leaning on the armrest, his chin resting on his hand, and his head is turned toward the parlor door that leads to the east hall. Briony follows Thorin’s interest and looks toward the doorway; the reed in her hand shakes, the tiny flame quivering, and she takes a careful breath and holds it, trying to steady herself. 

Drogo is standing in the east hallway, tucked back into the shadows. Briony doesn’t know how well Thorin can see, between the dim light of the parlor and his dwarvish eyes; she doesn’t know if he can make out more than the general shape of Drogo, if he can see the dark, thick curls on his head or the soft roundness of his limbs, the shape of his mouth and nose or the way he has tucked one foot behind the other.

Briony turns her head as she exhales, so that she won’t blow out the reed; the flame is steadying, lighting her cupped palm. When she enters the parlor, she crosses between Thorin and the door to the east hall, breaking Thorin’s line of sight. She doesn’t look at Thorin, or Drogo; neither does she speak to them. She lights the hanging lantern in the middle of the room, then kneels to start a fire in the hearth. 

She is still kneeling on the hearthstones when Thorin joins her, kneeling with a grunt and a creaking of his knees. He touches her, resting his fingers against the back of her hand for a beat or two, then he grasps her hand, turning it over as he tugs at the reed. She watches as he takes the reed from her, as he lifts it to his face and blows out its tiny flame; his hand is warm and dry in hers, his fingers twined between hers.

“Briony,” he says, and she closes her eyes, keeps them closed as he lifts her hand. His lips are as warm and dry as his hand, and the rasp of his beard against her skin feels achingly familiar. “I want to learn to be content.”


End file.
